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Happiness is Sex and Chucky >> The most magnificent movies of the year by MATTHEW HAYS THE TOP TEN
2. The Opposite of Sex Don Roos's directorial debut is a tribute to the independent filmmaking spirit. Indie-queen Christina Ricci stars as an amoral 16 year old, out to wreak havoc on the life of her gay half-brother. With more plot twists than Deathtrap and Sleuth combined, The Opposite of Sex also features a knockout, Oscar-worthy performance by Friends' Lisa Kudrow.
4. Elizabeth Shekhar Kapur follows up his international smash Bandit Queen with his own unique spin on uptight British royalty. Along with Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth adds to the trend of a quasi-feminist retelling of history. Cate Blanchett plays the royal to perfection, frustrated by the confines oppressing her role as the monarch. Geoffrey Rush and Sir Richard Attenborough shine in supporting roles.
6. Nô Robert Lepage's third feature film as director is his most audience-friendly. It is also, it must be noted, a diversion from the artiness of his first two features, a formal shift which infuriated many critics. Lepage has mastered a witty and acerbic farce, in which Quebec federalists and sovereignists clash at the Canadian Pavillion at the Japan World Fair during the 1970 October Crisis. This film set off a bizarre linguistic rift when it premiered at the World Film Fest; anglo critics loved it, while francophone critics were virtually unanimous in their condemnation. Won the Best Canadian Feature award at the Toronto International Film Fest. 7. Pecker Edward Furlong, who hasn't been seen much since his precocious turn in James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, returns triumphantly in this gentle comedy by gross-out king John Waters. Furlong plays Pecker, an aspiring photographer who loves to take photos of everyone in his kitsch-laden Baltimore burb. Furlong is soon discovered by a hip New York agent (Lili Taylor) and his life is turned upside down by his sudden and massive celebrity. 8. Slums of Beverly Hills Tamara Jenkins' feature directorial debut grew out of a Sundance screenwriting workshop. The beloved Alan Arkin stars as a single father desperately trying to keep his family in cheap Beverly Hills digs so his kids are eligible for enrolment in the 'hood's superior schools. A poignant and ostensibly simple film, punctuated by the effectively oddball performances of Marisa Tomei and Natasha Lyonne. The scenes of family tension are dead on. 9. Waking Ned Devine Kirk Jones' loveletter to Ireland is a welcome switch (a film in which the Irish are seen as uplifting and not resilient losers). After the 51 inhabitants of a small Irish village find out that the latest lottery winner is among them, they must find out who it is; the elderly Ned Devine has won, but he was so elated by the news that he held the winning number, he died with the ticket in his hand. The townsfolk have soon crafted a master plan to have one of the living pose as Devine so they can split up the millions amongst themselves. Featherweight, but a delightful diversion. 10. Bride of Chucky Undoubtedly, I am the only critic in the universe who will put this on their top-10 list. But I stand defiant: everyone needs a little Chucky in their lives, and everyone has a little Chucky in them. Wonderfully, outrageously tacky, just what we all love but pretend not to. Jennifer Tilly, as the new doll Tiffany, is a welcome addition to the Chucky plastic family. The doll-on-doll sex scene, while not exactly erotic, stands as one of the high points of the season. And the box-office BLUNDERS... (drum roll, please) Gus Van Sant should have left well enough alone: his Psycho may have been fun for the cast and crew, but the question "why?" hung over the film like a wet, soggy blanket. Bruce Willis was his usual annoying self in Armageddon, a noisy, headache-inducing action film made by, for and about idiots. The Americanization of dear old Godzilla also turned out to be unintentionally disastrous. The Japanese fellow just had so much more charisma. Don't quite know how they did it, but the folks behind The Avengers managed to take a cult classic TV series, a brilliant cast (Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sean Connery), lots of flashy special effects and cool art direction and churn out a neverendingly boring film. Woody Allen struck dirt with Celebrity, his meandering and unsatisfying meditation on the effects and meaning of fame. Brian De Palma and Nicolas Cage joined forces and the result, Snake Eyes, places them both firmly in the dog house. I don't care if it was shot in Montreal: a cryptic, pointless script does not an art film make. That king of bathos Robin Williams went straight to hell (to recover his dead wife) in What Dreams May Come, an annoying and shallow look at struggles in the afterlife.
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1. Happiness Todd Solondz's follow-up to his ode to the screwed-up phase of adolescence Welcome to the Dollhouse is equally as good, but on a much grander scale. This time, the writer-director takes aim at the hypocrisy of American family values and the desperate search for companionship in the most intelligent movie of the year. An outstanding cast in what is undoubtedly one of the strangest ensemble pieces ever.
3. A Simple Plan Everyone wondered aloud if Sam Raimi, the man behind such genre pastiches as the Evil Dead trilogy and The Quick and the Dead, could make a bare-bones suspense film work. The answer is an unequivocal yes. Armed with a casting coup that includes Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton, this tale of rampant greed that everyone can relate to is a deliberately paced tour de force. Money never looked so evil.
5. Touch of Evil At first I was a bit queasy about the notion of some film academics getting together and recutting this classic 1958 noir film; it all smacked of the Beatles reunion album (with a dead John Lennon) or that Natalie Cole duet (with her dead father). But the new version, adapted to the specifications of a 58-page memo the late Orson Welles sent to the studio after they dropped him from post-production, is indeed an improvement on the original cut. Most people of the last generation were introduced to this film on video, but nothing beats seeing it on the big screen.